Return of the "Listen Here," Mack
It’s very rare to see the goalposts get moved this quickly, but to go from “it’s a hoax and not a thing at all” to “it would whip ass if I can keep us below a hundred thousand deaths” in the span of weeks is a definite reframing of expectations. Contextually, the president had reports that said, with absolutely no action, we were looking at deaths in the millions, so, in practice, his perfectly shitty response bringing us down to merely six figures has to be considered a win right? Aren’t you tired of all this winning yet? Imagine going in for an oil change on your car but the shop crushes it into a cube accidentally but really the owner could’ve shoved the entire crew inside before doing it so you’ve got to look on the bright side, also we don’t take Discover.
Listen to This - Episode 1 - #113 - Joe Biden - Listen via Soundcloud
The conceit of the Episode 1 podcast series is that every episode is the pilot episode of a series that never went any further. This one in particular is set in a universe where all three hosts are Joe Biden (it’s unclear whether every person in the universe if Joe Biden but it’s very possible) and I love it but it’s also tough to listen to for long stretches without feeling like you’re going insane. Each of them take turns trading off weird, winding anecdotes full of made-up sounding names and old-timey terms, and the result is a riot.
Given that you’ve spent the last couple months immersing yourself in it like Luke at the beginning of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, you may have at some point been struck by curiosity about the origins of Purell, and gel hand sanitizer as a broad concern. Or not, you’ve probably had other concerns on your mind like killing the invisible things out to get you, but the history is surprisingly interesting, and available here.
Why the fancy diaper? Turns out the droids were selling a video feed of the room as a cam show online for extra credits on the side. Galactic pimps basically. Also how often does someone get grievously injured there that they need a big goo tube on standby to revive people? That is because the Rebels trailed behind the Empire in workplace safety training.
In another case of all these newsletter subjects looping in on themselves, Jon Bois recommended a channel that dumped me back into speed-running YouTube today, this time by way of a look at a community’s efforts to topple decades-old NES Punch-Out!! records. While this clocks in at nearly an hour, or fifty-three years in YouTube time, it’s crazy to see the lengths to which people go in order to analyze and improve their scores within the constructs and restrictions of the game world.
Wirecutter, long a resource for me to lazily recommend or shop for things I’d rather not spend an uncomfortable amount of time researching, is keeping a running list of companies that are offering their products and services free during this time, worth checking in either at the link directly or via whatever Wirecutter social media account you choose to poison yourself with.
In places where restaurants are still allowed to remain open, the ones with the ability to do so have pivoted to being take-out or delivery concerns, and this short thread on Twitter is a good look at how Tock, normally used to book dining reservations, had to quickly build out the infrastructure to accommodate the new business needs of their clients.
Item 2 of 3 in the “Short Twitter threads about foods” division is this look at how to waffle-ize a bag of tater tots and, folks, from experience, we as a people need to waffle-ize things much more often. Notably, leftover stuffing from big dinner occasions/those nights when you just feel like eating stuffing out of a bowl with your bare hands is a great item to waffle up.
The last item: everyone stuck at home has decided to get into breadmaking, if my social feed is any indicator, which had the side effect of causing a big run on store-bought yeasts. Here’s where most of us would usually say, welp, no bread for me I guess, but for the more intrepid, here’s how to harvest and grow your own yeast from other foods you likely have around the home.
To conclude, something utterly baffling:
It’s always weird whenever people post things and go “OMMMMMMGGGG WHO DID THIS I CAN’T STAND YOU” like, where did you copy the thing from? Probably them, or at least click through a couple more times it’s not like you dug up a USB key full of jpegs or something.
